Natalie Dormer on the Tyrells being “unjustly blown to smithereens”

Some of us had suspected it was coming for months before the Sept of Baelor was blown to bits in “The Winds of Winter,” but no one anticipated that the death of Margaery Tyrell and the end of Natalie Dormer’s time on Game of Thrones would be quite as dramatic as it was. But after five seasons on the show (her character arrived in Season 2), Dormer was both ready to move on, and just as horrified by her own end as everyone else.

Talking to Harper’s Bazaar, Dormer said, “I’d like to think that people will be sad to see the Tyrells unjustly blown to smithereens! As an audience member you spend so much time with these characters, you get to know them very well, and to have them so irreverently snatched from you and killed is really harsh.”

"Margaery’s been battling Cersei for the last however many years and she ends up dying on the show not because she didn’t beat Cersei, but because she trusted that someone else—the Sparrow—was handling her. She had the reins taken away from her, from being in control of the situation; the High Sparrow took the reins and it proves that he underestimated Cersei in a way that Margaery never would have. There’s a moment before Margaery and the High Sparrow die when they look at each other and Margaery realizes that Cersei has outplayed him and she’s gonna die because of that."

Dormer says it didn’t surprise her that death was coming for Margaery, since death is “an occupational hazard” on a show like Game of Thrones. That means that everyone is very sympathetic when a sudden plot twist puts someone out of work. “Every year we lose a few people and the cast members are always really supportive of each other,” she said. Filming her death scene was a blast, though, no pun intended.

"We shot two or three days in the Sept. Jonathan Pryce (the High Sparrow) is a lot of fun; I’ve enjoyed working with him this season. I was also with Finn Jones, who plays Loras, all that time. It was very moving and fitting that Finn and I should be together for those last three days and the brother and sister should go to their fate together, because you see the brother and sister relationship so beautifully over the years. They go to their deaths physically holding each other."

One thing Dormer loves about Margaery’s end is that the show has been leaving clues about it for years—recall, for example, her line from Season 4 about not wanting to end up with “a string of dead sparrow heads around my neck” during her wedding to Joffrey. One could argue that that’s exactly what happened to her, even if the necklace was metaphorical.

"If it was on purpose, then it’s a very, very clever thing to do because I was completely oblivious to what I was saying. I didn’t even know the character of the High Sparrow existed at that time because I hadn’t read the books."

Dormer also says she tried to keep herself in the dark as to what happens when she’s not filming, so she only found out about Tommen’s suicide when she heard crew members gossiping about how it went the day of shooting. She was also spoiled about the Hound’s return when she bumped into actor Rory McCann in the makeup trailer while filming the back half of the season. “And then I walked out of the trailer going, ‘Aw damn!’, I kind of wished I hadn’t seen him because now I knew the Hound was coming back [laughs].”

"It’s hilarious and weird because I was interviewed a few months previously and I was asked if I could bring back any character, who would it be. I said the Hound and at the time I didn’t know. It was a comment made completely innocently; I wasn’t trying to do a spoiler or a tease or be clever, I genuinely wanted Rory back! And lo and behold, there he was in the makeup trailer one day."

Now that Dormer’s off Game of Thrones, her goal is to stay out of corsets for a little while, although she admits that her love of history means that she keeps finding herself saying yes to these kinds of roles more than she means to; for example, see her in The Scandalous Lady W last year. But her current lineup of projects—In Darkness, Official Secrets, The God Four, and Patient Zero—are all thrillers, and Dormer says she hopes to be able to stay in comfortable modern clothes for at least a little while longer.